Hoax alert! ‘You can kill whites in South Africa’ billboard is fake

An image of a billboard declaring “You can kill whites in South Africa” is doing the rounds onFacebook – with one post of the pic shared more than 4,000 times.

Headed “MURDER MURDER”, it has the African National Congress logo on one side.

“Blacks can do anything!! Contact your nearest ANC office now! You will not be punished. You will get a white farm,” the billboard supposedly says.

The image appears to be a screengrab from Whatsapp. “This billboard was put up in Zimbabwe,” text beneath it reads in Afrikaans. “Send this to everyone you know and make it well known.”

One Facebook user pointed out the “lousy photoshop”. And yes, the billboard’s text has been manipulated. But that hasn’t stopped it being shared thousands of times.

The image also spread toTwitter, which prompted one of our readers to ask us to take a closer look.

Original billboard gave advice to Liberian rape victims

While the billboard itself is real, the text on it has been altered before.Snopes checked it in 2016 after another crude Photoshop job – headed “RAPE RAPE RAPE” – made the rounds claiming “Refugees can do anything!”

This version of the billboard has been circulating on social media since 2008.

It’s a manipulated version of a real billboard erected by Doctors Without Borders in Liberia to give advice to rape victims. The words have been changed, and the skin colour of the victim altered.

The real billboard told rape victims to “seek free treatment immediately” at the Clara Town clinic.

The image encouraging the murder of “whites in South Africa” is a version of the fake image that came before it, and not a very imaginative one at that. “Contact the Finnish Embassy now” became “Contact your nearest ANC office now”.

“Refugees can do anything” became “blacks can do anything”. And a sentence was added to “you will not be punished”.

In 2016, eNCA described the image as “obviously” fake. Three years on, the post is still circulating Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp.

Areverse image search would, within seconds, reveal the origin of the image. It’s a crucial test to make before sharing any sensational image on social media. – Africa Check (14/03/19)

Africa Check teams up with Facebook

Africa Check has partnered with Facebook to combat fake news and false information on the social platform. This spotcheck is part of the initiative.

As part of its third-party fact-checking programme, Facebook allows its partners to see public articles, pictures or videos that have been flagged as potentially inaccurate.

Content rated as “false” by fact-checkers will be downgraded in news feeds. This means fewer people will see it.

You can help us identify fake news and false information on Facebook. This guide explains how.

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For democracy to function, public figures need to be held to account for what they say. The claims they make need to be checked, openly and impartially. Africa Check is an independent, non-partisan organisation which assesses claims made in the public arena using journalistic skills and evidence drawn from the latest online tools, readers, public sources and experts, sorting fact from fiction and publishing the results.